Advances in genetics have made it possible to trace ancient migrations. It is now generally accepted that modern man arose in Africa about 200,000 years ago and from there spread first into India and Southeast Asia by coastal migration that probably included some boat crossings. There are several estimates of the time when this spread into India took place. According to the geneticist Stephen Oppenheimer, settlements in India appear about 90,000 years ago. From India there were later northeastern and northwestern migrations into Eurasia and the Far East.
The “Out of Africa” theory has superseded the earlier multiregional model according to which the Europeans, the Asians, and Indonesians arose independently in different parts of the world. There is overwhelming evidence that archaic lines --- such as Neanderthals in Europe --- simply died out, and the specific characteristics of the different races is not a consequence of a mixing of the regional and modern populations but rather of adaptation to unique climatic conditions.
Microevolution, as in the mutations of the mitochondrial DNA (inherited from the mother) and the Y chromosome (inherited from the father), helps us trace and connect populations across time and region. When the random mutations are calibrated one has a genetic clock. The clock can be validated in a variety of ways; for example, by using the knowledge of when the potato plant spread around the world from its Andean origin. Even without historical evidence related to the spread of the potato plant, a scientist can deduce the Andean origin of the plant from the fact that there exist many varieties of it in Peru and just a few lines in Asia, Europe, and Africa. Given the genetic clock and the distance between the DNA of the European and the current Peruvian varieties, one can estimate the period the plant was taken to Europe.
The new findings turn on its head the previous view of the origin of Indians. The earlier view, popular in Indian history books, was that the Indian population came in two waves from the northwest around four or five thousand years ago, displacing the earlier aboriginals, descendents of regional archaic groups.
The new view is that subsequent to the rise of modern mankind in Africa, it found a second home in India, which is the point of migration for the populations of Europe, North Africa, China and Japan. The migrants in India slowly adapted to the wide climatic conditions in the sub-continent (from the tropical to the extreme cold of the Himalayan region) leading to the rise of the Caucasoid and the Mongoloid races.
A recent paper in the journal Science reporting on the analysis of the DNA of the Orang Asli, the original inhabitants of Malaysia, confirms this view. According to it a single migration out of Africa took the southern route to India, Southeast Asia and Australasia. At this time Europe was too cold for human habitation. About 50,000 years ago, when deserts turned into grasslands, an “Out of India” migration populated the Near East and Europe, another migration went northeast through China and over the now submerged Bering Strait into the Americas. This agrees with the earliest known modern human sites of the Near East (45,000 years ago) and Europe (40,000 years ago).
It is likely that the earliest sites on the coastline that were occupied by the first migrants are now under water, since sea level has risen more than 60 metres since the last Ice Age. This widespread inundation is likely to be the basis of the flood myths that are common to all ancient cultures.
This view not only changes our understanding of the peopling of India, but also of Southeast Asia. For some time the academic view was that the Polynesians and the Indonesians were latecomers into their lands from China. The new view is that the habitation of Southeast Asia is almost as old as that of India and Australia, and the Chinese, as also the Japanese, are relative latecomers into northeast Asia.
Dental anthropology provides important clues in the retracing of ancient migrations. The Indian type of teeth is called Sundadont, and it is also found amongst Southeast Asians, Micronesians, and Polynesians. Contrasted from Sundadonty is Sinodonty (dental features that include shovel-shaped incisors, single-rooted upper first premolars, triple rooted lower first molars and other attributes), the degree of which is seen to increase as one travels north through the Mongoloid populations of mainland East Asia, and it is seen in extreme in the Americas. The South Asian origin of the pure-blood Ainu inhabitants of Japan is confirmed from their Sundadonty.
The Kennewick Man
The Kennewick Man, a 9,300 year old skeleton was discovered in 1996 on the banks of the Columbia River near the Washington town of Kennewick. The skeleton was caught in a controversy because the Native American groups did not wish the body of an ancestor to be dishonored. On the other hand, there was much interest to study the skeleton further because its features were very different from that of the typical north Asian type from which the Native Americans are descended.
Scientific study has shown that the Kennewick Man represents the Indian (South Asian) type. The skull is long and narrow and the teeth are of the Sundadont type. This should not be extrapolated to mean that the Kennewick Man actually came from the Indian subcontinent. But it confirms the spread of the Indian type all over the ancient world, from which it was displaced by later adaptations to different climates.
Language families
When the theory of the Aryan invasions into India is replaced by an “Out of India” viewpoint, one can readily explain regularities in languages that are spread widely. Linguists see connections between India and languages that extend to distant lands. Thus the Indo-Pacific family covers the languages of the Australian aborigines and the Papuans, the Austro-Asiatic cuts across from India to the Pacific (the Munda in India, the Thai, and the Vietnamese), and the Dravidian has connections with the Altaic (Japanese, Korean, and the Turkic).
Within India, the connections between the structure and vocabulary of the north and the south Indian languages indicate much internal migration of people. The genetic evidence indicates that the Dravidian languages are the more ancient, and the Aryan languages evolved in India over thousands of years before migrants carried them westward to Europe. The proto-Dravidian languages reached northeast Asia through the sea route. If Aryan evolved out of proto-Dravidian, the attempt of the linguists to construct a pure proto-Dravidian vocabulary is in all probability wrong.
The idea that the development of the Aryan languages took place in India explains how a variety of such languages are to be found in the sub-continent. Both the so-called kentum and satem language families are represented: Bangani is kentum, it is found in the Himalayan region; and languages such as Sanskrit, Hindi, and Assamese are satem.
External link: The Cradle that is India
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Sol Invictus Mithras,
I am afraid I was greatly disappointed with your "help".
It was not that I was unaware that right-wing authors (like Serge Trifkovic) do routinely quote Will Durant for political purposes. I had sought the references precisely to check-out the veracity, accuracy and context of these alleged "quotes" of Will Durant.
Your reference to Serge Trifkovic's quote of Will Durant is obviously of no use to me!
It is significant that Serge Trifkovic's own ethical standards fall short of giving references for the quotes -- leaving you to "guess" the reference! When we are dealing with supposed facts that can easily be verified (if true), why this resort to unreferenced quotes and "guesses"?
As for the other quote, you are relying on an article in the website Vedanta Society of New York! This gives the reference for the highly unlikely quote (of India being "the motherland of our race") as -- "Will Durant, The Case for India, 1930 ed., 4". I was already aware of this quote. Unfortunately, my own enquiries only led me only to the 1920 edition. Is there a 1930 edition? And I could not find the quoted passage at Page 4 (That was what was suggested, right?)
The question remains -- did Will Durant make the statements that some politically motivated texts attribute to him -- and if so, how accurate are the quotes, and what was the context? The fact that no has been able to provide references for over one year (despite my posting this query at Sulekha and at the Will Durant Forum) suggests that quotes these are fake. But I would revise my stand if some one can provide references that I can check up on in the library.
Anand Nair
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To Anand Nair,
If you're the one who was looking for the references to those 2 Will Durant quotes and you haven't got them yet (I haven't read pages 1 to 67 of this thread, so someone might have already helped you out):
http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=4649
"Islam’s Other Victims: India", By Serge Trifkovic
QUOTE
In his book The Story of Civilization, famous historian Will Durant
lamented the results of what he termed "probably the bloodiest story in
history." He called it "a discouraging tale, for its evident moral is
that civilization is a precious good, whose delicate complex order and
freedom can at any moment be overthrown by barbarians invading from
without and multiplying from within."
END QUOTE
[I'm guessing Trifkovic is referring to the "Our Oriental Heritage" entry in Durant's "The Story of Civilization" series.]
Available from http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/1567310125/qid=1132033740/sr=2-1/ref=pd_bbs_b_2_1/103-1267020-2030263?v=glance&s=books
http://vedanta-newyork.org/articles/vedanta_influence_1.htm
QUOTE
"Let us remember ... that India was the motherland of our race and Sanskrit the mother of Europe's languages; that she was the mother of our philosophy, mother, through the Arabs, of much of our mathematics; mother, through Buddha, of the ideals. embodied in Christianity; mother, through the village community, of self-government and democracy. Mother India is, in many ways, the mother of us all." (Will Durant, The Case for India, 1930 ed., 4.)END QUOTE
Available 2nd hand: http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/B0008B09IY/qid=1132033812/sr=1-2/ref=sr_1_2/103-1267020-2030263?v=glance&s=books
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Yes, the article by Dr. Richard Conn Henry posted by ooo00ooo is interesting.
The physicist is right that every thing that we can ever know about the universe has to be "mental". If that is so, then there is at least a possibility that in reality only the mind exists. That it is a "mental universe".
What we "think" we are "perceiving" outside of the mind, is actually concocted by the mind, and has no "real" existence. The world could indeed be a mere "virtual reality", in the computer parlance.
To understand this better, let us imagine that we put on virtual reality goggles and a virtual reality suit (dress) that are connected to a computer.
By wearing the goggles, we get to see not the world ahead of us, but the world as the computer software presents on the small video monitors fitted on the goggles. When we move our hands, the sensors on the dress give a feedback to the computer, and the computer will create in the goggles the motion picture of our hand motion.
I can reach out and pick up "objects" in front of me (which does not really exist, but which through the computer program, "appears" in the goggles video, as if this is there). The sensors and electrodes in the computer dress will simulate the experience, as if the object has been picked up. Etc. etc.
That is to say, I get to live in a "virtual world" that the computer software has built for me. A world that does not exist "really" outside the computer.
Virtual reality software is already in vogue and has many applications. The Boeing Simulator is a virtual reality cockpit, where the windscreen is actually a video monitor. The airport runway that the pilot "sees" through windscreen (and also through instruments in the cockpit control panel) is actually computer generated video. Using the simulator, the trainee pilot can "takeoff" from New York and "land" in London several hours later. He gets to fly through clouds, lightening storms etc. Even a fire in one of the engines can be simulated. All this without the simluator cockpit (mounted on a hydraulic structure) "actually" moving out of the simulator room.
It is quite possible that within our brains, we are fitted with a virtual reality software. This is what Dr. Richard Conn Henry suggests. This is also what the Indian concept of "maya" postulates.
But is this so? I would not think so. The reason is that I am able to recognize a "dream state" and "wakeful state".
The difference between the two is that in the dream state the "reality" that my brain software presents before me, is unconstrained -- I can be in Chennai this moment and in New York the next. I can float in air, and see unicorns and flying saucers. I can see an elephant in my room, which when I "wake up", I find not there. When I ask "another person" (whom also I "see"), if he "saw" an elephant, he will "tell" me, "No. But I saw that you were sleeping with your eyes closed. You were dreaming. There is no elephant here." (I get to "hear" this).
In other words, I have a wakeful state when the virtual reality images that my brain creates for me are HIGHLY CONSTRAINED. And I have a dream state when my brain creates for me images that are UNCONSTRAINED.
Now what causes this CONSTRAINT? It is like a virtual reality software where the computer can create images on the video screen, but this being CONSTRAINED by what is in front of web-cam connected to the computer.
It is this fact of CONSTRAINT that makes most scientists to disagree with the philosophical musings of Dr. Richard Conn Henry (and also of the ancients who conceived of the universe being merely "maya").
The fact of constraint makes the "maya" theory highly unparsimonious. It is far simpler to believe that our brain (most of the time) enable us to perceive a real existing world with adequate accuracy (enough to serve our normal purposes).
Whereas both the theories -- real world theory & virtual world theory -- are possible, the former is infinitely more plausible.
Nothing in Quantum Mechanics PRECLUDES the possibility that the universe can exist outside of the mind. It is just that some people (including some scientists) get carried away when they are confronted with situations where our senses (which evolved to survive in the grass lands of Africa) are not upto the task of objectively perceiving certain sub-atomic phenomena.
asnair@gmail.com
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This is interesting:
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v436/n7047/full/436029a.html
Concept
The mental Universe
Richard Conn Henry1
Richard Conn Henry is a Professor in the Henry A. Rowland Department of Physics and Astronomy, The Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, Maryland 21218, USA.
Top of pageAbstractThe only reality is mind and observations, but observations are not of things. To see the Universe as it really is, we must abandon our tendency to conceptualize observations as things.
Historically, we have looked to our religious leaders to understand the meaning of our lives; the nature of our world. With Galileo Galilei, this changed. In establishing that the Earth goes around the Sun, Galileo not only succeeded in believing the unbelievable himself, but also convinced almost everyone else to do the same. This was a stunning accomplishment in 'physics outreach' and, with the subsequent work of Isaac Newton, physics joined religion in seeking to explain our place in the Universe.
The more recent physics revolution of the past 80 years has yet to transform general public understanding in a similar way. And yet a correct understanding of physics was accessible even to Pythagoras. According to Pythagoras, "number is all things", and numbers are mental, not mechanical. Likewise, Newton called light "particles", knowing the concept to be an 'effective theory' — useful, not true. As noted by Newton's biographer Richard Westfall: "The ultimate cause of atheism, Newton asserted, is 'this notion of bodies having, as it were, a complete, absolute and independent reality in themselves.'" Newton knew of Newton's rings and was untroubled by what is shallowly called 'wave/particle duality'.
The 1925 discovery of quantum mechanics solved the problem of the Universe's nature. Bright physicists were again led to believe the unbelievable — this time, that the Universe is mental. According to Sir James Jeans: "the stream of knowledge is heading towards a non-mechanical reality; the Universe begins to look more like a great thought than like a great machine. Mind no longer appears to be an accidental intruder into the realm of matter... we ought rather hail it as the creator and governor of the realm of matter." But physicists have not yet followed Galileo's example, and convinced everyone of the wonders of quantum mechanics. As Sir Arthur Eddington explained: "It is difficult for the matter-of-fact physicist to accept the view that the substratum of everything is of mental character."
In his play Copenhagen, which brings quantum mechanics to a wider audience, Michael Frayn gives these word to Niels Bohr: "we discover that... the Universe exists... only through the understanding lodged inside the human head." Bohr's wife replies, "this man you've put at the centre of the Universe — is it you, or is it Heisenberg?" This is what sticks in the craw of Eddington's "matter-of-fact" physicists.
Discussing the play, John H. Marburger III, President George W. Bush's science adviser, observes that "in the Copenhagen interpretation of microscopic nature, there are neither waves nor particles", but then frames his remarks in terms of a non-existent "underlying stuff". He points out that it is not true that matter "sometimes behaves like a wave and sometimes like a particle... The wave is not in the underlying stuff; it is in the spatial pattern of detector clicks... We cannot help but think of the clicks as caused by little localized pieces of stuff that we might as well call particles. This is where the particle language comes from. It does not come from the underlying stuff, but from our psychological predisposition to associate localized phenomena with particles."
Proof without words: Pythagoras explained things using numbers.
In place of "underlying stuff" there have been serious attempts to preserve a material world — but they produce no new physics, and serve only to preserve an illusion. Scientists have sadly left it to non-physicist Frayn to note the Emperor's lack of clothes: "it seems to me that the view which [Murray] Gell-Mann favours, and which involves what he calls alternative 'histories' or 'narratives', is precisely as anthropocentric as Bohr's, since histories and narratives are not freestanding elements of the Universe, but human constructs, as subjective and as restricted in their viewpoint as the act of observation."
Physicists shy from the truth because the truth is so alien to everyday physics. A common way to evade the mental Universe is to invoke 'decoherence' — the notion that 'the physical environment' is sufficient to create reality, independent of the human mind. Yet the idea that any irreversible act of amplification is necessary to collapse the wave function is known to be wrong: in 'Renninger-type' experiments, the wave function is collapsed simply by your human mind seeing nothing. The Universe is entirely mental.
In the tenth century, Ibn al-Haytham initiated the view that light proceeds from a source, enters the eye, and is perceived. This picture is incorrect but is still what most people think occurs, including, unless pressed, most physicists. To come to terms with the Universe, we must abandon such views. The world is quantum mechanical: we must learn to perceive it as such.
One benefit of switching humanity to a correct perception of the world is the resulting joy of discovering the mental nature of the Universe. We have no idea what this mental nature implies, but — the great thing is — it is true. Beyond the acquisition of this perception, physics can no longer help. You may descend into solipsism, expand to deism, or something else if you can justify it — just don't ask physics for help.
There is another benefit of seeing the world as quantum mechanical: someone who has learned to accept that nothing exists but observations is far ahead of peers who stumble through physics hoping to find out 'what things are'. If we can 'pull a Galileo,' and get people believing the truth, they will find physics a breeze.
The Universe is immaterial — mental and spiritual. Live, and enjoy.
FURTHER READING
Marburger, J. On the Copenhagen Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics http://www.ostp.gov/html/Copenhagentalk.pdf (2002).
Henry, R. C. Am. J. Phys. 58, 1087−1100 (1990).
Steiner, M. The Applicability of Mathematics as a Philosophical Problem (Harvard Univ. Press, Cambridge, MA, 1998).
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0oo0 quotes from the article:-
"The team say their experiment provides the first evidence that the second law of thermodynamics is violated at appreciable time and length scales. "
The maximum time was 2 seconds. What is significant about this experiment was the stretching of the time limit, compared to earlier experiments. It is not even CLAIMED by the experimenters that the second law of thermodynamics has been falsified (or needs to be reconsidered as a result of this)..
The existence of such "limits" where the law breaks down (at whatever level) is as predicted by thermodynamics.
"Their results are also in good agreement with predictions of the "fluctuation theorem"..."
And the "fluctuation theorem" does NOT claim to falsify second law of thermodynamics. This theorem (applicable at atomic scales) itself is consistent with thermodynamics.
"The results imply that the fluctuation theorem has important ramifications for nanotechnology and indeed for how life itself functions", claim the researchers"
Yes. That is right. But NOT if it is suggested that this has knocked off (or is about to knock off) the material basis of life functions -- including consciousness. The trend is just the reverse.
asnair@gmail.com
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I fully agree with Que Cera Cera, "Till then, what the materialists have is but a HYPOTHESIS that is favored by science (for whatever reasons), and NOT A FACT; lets be clear about that."
Absolutely so.
asnair@gmail.com
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>>"Materialists who passionately believe that life is made up of assemblage of non-living particles just have to do one thing. They should just show abinitio in a lab an assembly of non-living particles coming to life. "
----------------------------------
Yes.
Till then, what the materialists have is but a HYPOTHESIS that is favored by science (for whatever reasons), and NOT A FACT; lets be clear about that.
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Materialists who passionately believe that life is made up of assemblage of non-living particles just have to do one thing. They should just show abinitio in a lab an assembly of non-living particles coming to life.
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nair Saab,
Read this carefully: "The team say their experiment provides the first evidence that the second law of thermodynamics is violated at appreciable time and length scales.
Their results are also in good agreement with predictions of the "fluctuation theorem", a theory developed at ANU 10 years ago to reconcile the second law with the behaviour of particles at microscopic scales.
"The results imply that the fluctuation theorem has important ramifications for nanotechnology and indeed for how life itself functions", claim the researchers"
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Let me quote from the New Scientist link -
"To the limit Physicists knew that at atomic scales, over very short periods of time, statistical mechanics is pushed beyond its limit, and the second law does not apply. Put another way, situations that break the second law become much more probable. "
Thus it is ONLY "over very short periods of time" that order can possibly increase.
Order conservation becomes less and less probable as the period of time increases. Even at human time scales (as opposed to atomic scales) this law has NEVER been observed to be violated. This is so rare a contingency that this is regarded as IMPOSSIBLE by science -- for all practical purposes.
This becomes increasingly even LESS LIKELY as the time scale is further increased to astronomical or cosmic level. Which is why the postulate of an ETERNAL atman or brahman is discounted by science.
PS. This demo elegantly showed something Science already knew (for the last over 100 years). This did not constitute a conceptual breakthrough, or a revolutionary break from the earlier theory.
Hence this did not make the person eligible for the Nobel Prize.
asnair@gmail.com
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